How To Make an Animated Commercial Motion Graphics

Animated commercial Motion Graphics are one of the most in-demand intellectual products in today`s Graphic and Advertising Industry. Everything about them, from the way we can prepare the content for them to the way we can bring it to life through pictures and motions, makes perfect sense to suit new audience tastes, sense of conviviality, and attention span.

If you want to make Animated Commercial Motion Graphics to make money, before anything you need to get familiar with the fundamental stuff.

Graphic and animation Theory

You need to learn about the theory of colors, how to mix them, rules of composition in the image and how to use and break them, rules of animation, Effects that sound effects can generate when played at the right time, and everything helping you see the motion graphics as if you`re a movie director, creating precise feelings with moving images and sounds.

Business Theory

You also need to see this as a business and not a self-expressing art if you want to make money out of it. If you can`t cope with the business side of this job, you can`t rely on its artistic side for long. You need to learn how to deal with the customer and their requirements and understand the very nature of business, its genuine characteristics about how to manage its recourses and assets.

You also need to see the business -whether having a studio, working in one, or freelancing- and accept it with its genuine characteristics about how to manage its recourses and assets.

Encyclopedia knowledge

You may not need all of them for every project but you have to get to know them and build on your knowledge and how you can tweak the rules over time. unlike technical stuff which I recommend only learning what you`re going to use, you have to have an encyclopedia knowledge of the theories, otherwise, you have to only learn by error with damages that are either too big or irreversible.

Technical software

As technical tools, you will need After Effects, Premiere, Illustrator, and Photoshop from Adobe. But as much as it`s necessary to master what you need and gives you enough options, You don't need to learn the entire environment of these. If you acquire this subject-based pragmatic approach of learning the tools for only what you are going to do instead of the learning tool there is.

One step at a time

Mainly because of the vast nature of different parts in animated commercial motion graphics, thinking ahead about every single part of the project and its possible outcome at once for too long can be pretty paralyzing.

Remember to take one step at a time and have one priority at a time, you shouldn't even consider the big picture while doing specific tasks, let alone other particular facts.

Remember K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple S.. Sir)

When in doubt go in the minimalistic direction, if you want to better anything, try to perfect what you have, whether it's content or visuals, saying more with less is always better.

intro-How To Make an Animated Commercial Motion Graphics

Total Learning time: 300 hours, 50 minutes

Total Cost: 0 USD

Hardware Needed to make a 2D Animated Commercial:

- A Decent Computer ( <16-32 Gb RAM)

- Mouse and keyboard (optional)

- A Good Internet Connection

Software Needed to make an Animated Commercial Motion Graphics

Adobe After Effects

Adobe Premiere

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Animation Composer Plug-in (free)

Paid Plug-ins (Pasiche, iexpression, Joystick `n slider, rubberhose, ...)

Steps Needed Learn How to Make An an Animated Commercial (2D Motion Graphics)

Step 1 : make a content blueprint

We all know how important the content is and the story is king but how much we take it seriously in action is what makes the difference. In the First step of making Animated commercial Motion Graphics, you will need to learn how to develop the main content based on what the video owner says about the product and the goal of the video. Inclusion is the most important aspect of this part, so you need to get your hand to whatever there is about the subject of the video; this can be the salesperson's introduction of the product, the product catalog, what people in the line of the production say about it, what the target audience needs from this and more ...

Step 2 : Research The Market, Audience, Product and Competitors

Then you need to learn how to Research the Market, The Audience, and The Product then go through the main competitors. This way you will know who you are making the video for as the audience, and you will know what you need to highlight in the product and how to do it better than the closest competitor.
You also need to research the reality or representative graphic elements to get a reference. Suppose you are recreating a scene at a restaurant, the mise-en-scene, employee behavior, and many other details. These are the clues you should be looking at to get a realistic restaurant in your scene. We invest enough time and energy to get the best clues possible and use them to create a scene out of nothing that is indistinguishable from reality by logic.
The research further includes target markets, target audiences, rivals, and complementary fields. Researching this extensively in every project gives us an edge to stay a little ahead of the game in the industry.

Step 3 : write narration script on a story structure and get its approval

You will need to learn the main story structure to build up from what you now have from your research and blueprint content. The way to choose what's going to be in the Animated commercial Motion Graphics final product, how to prioritize, and how to communicate the last story is crucial to the integrity of the product more than anything else. And is able to dramatically improve or ruin the results. Every minute is about 135 words of narration on animated commercial motion graphics, you need to get the final approval from your customers or your focus group because everything in the video will be built over this script.

Step 4 : Send the motion graphics script for narration

At this step, you can send the script for narration if you work with other artists and don`t want to voice over it yourself. However, I do recommend working with someone else because first, you get to work on the storyboard as someone perfects narrating simultaneously the script simultaneously. You must have a good corporation with the narrator to perfect the remaining accents and energies to mean what they say as you keep other parts clean. You can cut the best part but I recommend it be narrated in one go and cut from 2 or 3 files, top. otherwise, it will feel unreal and choppy. Keep in mind that throughout your project you have to work with many artists like the narrator or graphic designers; you need to learn and build knowledge of best communication practices, especially with artits for this reason.

Step 5 : Design The Storyboard of you Animated Commercial Motion Graphics

A good Storyboard makes the job way faster, easier, and better for you and whomever you`re making the Animated commercial Motion Graphics for. You need to learn how to make a good one depending on your situation whether you want to draw every graphical element or buy them from websites like Shutterstock.

Step 6 : Order or design graphic elements

You can design graphic elements from scratch, buy them from Shutterstock and ask a graphic designer to draw them. These have to be vector files to be able to fully customize them. If you are going to order them from a website like Shutterstock or freepik, decide about a style and get all the elements in that style. Ask the graphic designer to keep your desired style consistent in all elements, characters, and backgrounds that they design for your animated commercial motion graphics. This goes from basic forms like flat and isometric to keeping the same feeling in the art style.
Keep in mind that all of the websites you use to buy elements, characters, and backgrounds for your animated commercial motion graphics, have dedicated artist galleries and collections, you can also search inside an art gallery on most of these sites. if you couldn't try this in your chrome bar to search in a specific URL: site:"URL of the artist page" "keyword". there's a space between the URL and the keyword, there is no space between site and URL, and of course, don't use "".
The more time you spend searching, choosing and going through these graphic elements, the more familiar you get to later work on them in your Animated Commercial Motion Graphics.
I usually go through a vector selling platform, set a time like 2 minutes max to find each element, and keep them in open tabs to make the final decisions once I get all of them, because I may want to change their purpose or replace them with what I see in search results, recommended items and inside an art gallery. In the end, I review them all once before I buy them.
If I can`t find something that I want I let it be and come back to it with more time, if I still can't find it, I get two or more different elements involved in it, and combine them later in illustrator. like I`m doing the process for graphic elements of this DIY for the past two days.

Step 7 : Prepare your elements in illustrator

You need to import, clean up and customize your elements in adobe illustrator.
Imported eps files can be edited with illustrator later to take effect in after effects but you can`t infinitely resize or reshape them in after effects like a normal shape layer so make the canvas size 1920*1080 if that's your animated commercial motion graphics dimensions so you get to see how it looks in after effects.
You need to customize and clean unwanted elements and properties from your file and change the color of the element to your color palette to have color management and peprsistency.
Remember to name these files correctly so later you can edit them and have them changed in your after effects composition.

Step 8: Import and Animate them in After Effects

The storyboard tells you what happens and in what order, and the Narration Audio is your precise timing reference for keyframes.
Watch as many youtube tutorials about how to do certain animations that you like and you get recommendations from youtube and try to implement them in your workflow.
Naming and coloring layers aren`t about working nicely but crucial matters of practicality. Keep your composition and project files nicely organized because you don`t only reduce the time of looking for layers, files, and properties, but it also reduces frustration and fatigue. This way you can focus on what's important instead of wrestling with a cluttered project.

Step 9: Distance yourself from production and Review

After you are done checking and fixing obvious mistakes that inevitably happen during hours of making motion graphics, you need to export it, close after effects, and distance yourself from the animated commercial project.
Especially if you make some part of the process like animating in after-affects as I do, you need to distance yourself from the perspective of working with bezier keyframe paths in compositions, to someone who only sees the result as it happens 25 frames per second. This way you can supervise your labor part. Review the result in this perspective without opening after effects and note what you like to change and its timeline, then open the after effects project for your animated commercial motion graphics and fix them.
The result of all your hard work can get really damaged by simple mistakes that can easily occur in long hours of working in after effects, so I can't stress enough the importance of reviewing your work a lot of times before you get comfortable presenting it.

Step 10: Present your work and look for the next Animated Commercial Motion Graphics gig

Now that you made an Animated Commercial Motion Graphics deserving to be one of your work samples to show and get new and better gigs, do it. Advertise and present it to get better gigs. You might want to join freelancing websites, work part-time or full-time with an organization, make your own website and get new customers, or make an ecosystem of most of them, as I did.